Trouble For A Mega Polygamist

Despite the air of protest, the women kept smiling. For them, the arrest of Masaba and the outrage that has greeted the revelations that he is married to more than 86 women is a needless intrusion, as all the partners in the marriage are living together happily. “They are just envious of Baba’s peaceful household. He is a kind man who minds his business and his children don’t make any trouble in this place. They (the children) are many, yet they are peaceful and respectful. He has about 115 children and all his children carry his (Masaba’s) facial marks as their identity,” said Kudirat Bello, who hopes to join the Masaba’s harem after the Ramadan.

Apart from Kudirat, there are nine other women who are waiting to move in. Masaba has already paid dowries on each of them. The 10 new wives live in apartments rented for them in the Kotaworo neighbourhood by the cleric and their needs are met by their intending husband. “I am very happy to be one of the wives of Baba and I am looking forward to moving in and joining the others”, said Kudirat who converted from Christianity to Islam after she agreed to marry Masaba.

Mahmud Bello Masaba, 33- year-old son of the spiritual healer, told TheNEWS how his father was arrested. “The police just came and said they wanted to search everywhere. They entered all the rooms in the compound. We did not disturb the police because Baba said we should allow them to search the entire house and we allowed them into the rooms. They did not find anything against Baba, yet they arrested him,” he said.

How does his father take care of such a massive family? “He is a man of God, a healer, and a malam. He can heal anybody of sickness. Even now that he is not here, people are still coming to consult him. We will call him on phone and he will just tell them what to do and their problems will be solved. My father is from God and does the work of God,” explained the younger Masaba. This magazine was, however, told by one of Masaba’s wives that the polygamist has followers or what he calls Jamaa across Nigeria and abroad. These do not only revere him, but regularly send big amounts of money to him. The mega-polygamist also has fanatical following in the Bida Emirate and nearly everybody approached by this magazine spoke glowingly of him. He is widely considered as generous.

Most of Masaba’s neighbours were also surprised at the current travails of the cleric. According to them, he has been part of the Bida Emirate for a long time and the fact that he is married to more than six dozen women has never been a secret. Indeed, this magazine met with Hajiya Bewa, a sister to the former Emir of the town, Umaru Sanda Ndayako, who is married to Masaba.

This medium gathered that the arrest of the self-acclaimed healer is partly due to worries of security chiefs in Niger State about the possibility of Masaba’s followers causing religious upheaval in the mould of the Maitatsine uprising of the 1980s. It was learnt that Masaba began his spiritual healing in Lagos, after resigning from paid employment. He is said to still maintain a sprawling residence in the former Nigerian capital. This serves as his Lagos office. While in Lagos, Masaba was known as Baba Tapa, and was known for his curative prowess.

Some of his wives are said to be women who came in search of solutions to one ailment or the other. “As soon as I met him, the headache was gone. God told me it was time to be his wife. Praise be to God I am his wife now,” Sharifat, who was 25 at the time he married Masaba told the BBC. According to his wives, Masaba does not believe in the use of orthodox medicine and even claimed in an interview that he lost about 40 of his children because their mothers went against his instruction that orthodox medicine should not be administered on them.

He also denied the existence of common ailments like malaria. Masaba’s success with women was, however, known only to his followers and people in his Bida neighbourhood until recently, when he started granting newspaper interviews. The Bida-born healer had asserted in interviews with some media houses that he married over 80 wives because the Islamic religion, which he practises did not limit the number of wives a man can marry. According to him, there is no punishment stated in the Q’uran for a man who marries more that four wives, but the holy book has punishments for fornication and adultery which he is not guilty of. “I don’t go looking for them, they come to me. I will consider the fact that God has asked me to do it and I will just marry them,” the octogenarian said. He was, however, quick to advise others not to follow his footsteps. “A man with 10 wives would collapse and die, but my own power is given by Allah. That is why I have been able to control 86 of them. When you marry a man with 86 wives, you know he knows how to look after them,” he said in one interview.

Islamic scholars are not amused by Masaba’s use of their religion to justify his phenomenal appetite for women. According to them, Islam only allows a man to marry up to four wives and no more. When confronted by with this, Masaba said he stopped reading the Q’uran about 20 years ago, when he claimed to have seen Allah and continues to insist that the scriptures do not limit the number of wives a man may have. The claim by Masaba that he has seen God was described as blasphemous by the clerics, who consequently accused him of running a cult. Notable Islamic personalities like the Sultan of Sokoto, Mohamed Sa’ad Abubakar; and Secretary-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, NSCIA, Alhaji Lateef Adegbite, also described the healer’s marriage to 86 wives as un-Islamic. On theirs, scholars from  Jama’tul Nasril Islam, JNI, were reported to have gone to see Masaba and convince him that no muslim is permitted to marry more than four wives, using various Islamic texts. When the octogenarian refused, JNI issued a statement on 18 August, condemning him. According to JNI, any muslim who “marries more than four wives either by mistake or out of ignorance, is instructed to choose but only four and seek Allah’s forgiveness.” Similarly, anyone that contravenes Prophet Muhammad’s (SAW) sayings, the ulamas also said, and marries more than four wives, is not a Muslim. Such a person should either repent within three days or “shall be sentenced to death according to shariah,” the organisation said. It then called on Masaba to divorce 82 of his wives within three days. Though many regarded the organisation’s ruling as a death sentence, the JNI later said it has no power to declare Fatwa on anyone.

But as the issue appeared to be receding from national discourse, the head of Bida Emirate Council, the Etsu Nupe, who is also the chairman of the Niger State Council of Traditional Rulers, Alhaji Yahaya Abubakar, waded in. The former military officer, who had been away on lesser hajj when the controversies started, met with the Emirate Council. The council resolved to invite the mega-polygamist for a meeting.

At the end of the meeting, the traditional ruler commanded Masaba to take steps to divorce 82 of his 86 wives within 48 hours or leave Nupe Kingdom, as his safety could no longer be guaranteed. There were initial reports that the traditional healer agreed to divorce his wives. But when Masaba refused to show up in the Emir’s palace after the expiration of the three-day ultimatum, the message was clear: no divorce.

He later said he did not tell the Emir that he would divorce his wives. “They asked me to swear by the Holy Q’uran, which I did. They asked me concerning the number of my wives and I told them and that I had started assembling these wives since 1980 and I swore that if I did my wish without the consent of God that God, should punish me and If I lied against God, God should give me the kind of punishment He has not given to anybody before, either in this life or hereafter”, Masaba said.

His lawyer, Shehu Muhammed, also obtained an injuction at Federal High Court, Abuja, against the eviction order and the fatwa passed on client. The lawyer insisted last week that there is no reason for dragging Masaba to the Upper Sharia Court since that order was in existence. According to him, the First Information Report presented before the court by the police are mere allegations against the accused. Neither the state nor the police, said the lawyer, were the aggrieved parties in the case and that if the allegations against the accused are true, Masaba should have been dragged to court by his wives or their parents.

The Lokoja-based Centre for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution has also risen to the defence of the polygamist. In a statement issued last week, the group said there is no federal or state law that limits the number of wives anybody should marry or is there anywhere in the holy books that stipulates death sentence for anybody who marries more than one or four wives. The group also said that the Islamic leaders, who asked Masaba to divorce 82 of the wives, “did not consider the social and health implications of pushing 82 women into the streets.”

The trial of Pa Masaba promises to be an interesting one, as human rights groups in the Northern part of the country also said last Thursday that no less than 86 lawyers have been mobilised to defend the polygamist.